


Tinder and Flint

by ZaliaChimera



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Affection, Awkwardness, Cigarettes, Emotional Manipulation, Introspection, Kissing, M/M, Manipulation, Praise Kink, Season/Series 03, Seduction, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Smoking, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28366773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: Jon is here, with a cigarette in his shaking fingers, and compared to everything else that makes up his life right now, what’s one cigarette?Jon has some company during his cigarette break, and a lot more to think about than he'd have liked.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 22
Kudos: 74
Collections: End of Year Exchange 2020





	Tinder and Flint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhyNotFly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyNotFly/gifts).



“Lighter?”

Jon jerks his attention away from the cigarette in his hand and up towards Elias as he approaches. The man has a heavy black lighter in his hands - one of those posh ones - and he holds it out in offering.

Jon rolls the cigarette over in his fingers. He hadn’t been intending to smoke it. He hasn’t smoked since Leitner, even with all of the stress, but it’s like a challenge to himself. How much control can he exert over his own impulses with the temptation there in front of him.

“I wasn’t planning to-“

“Come now, Jon,” Elias says, and he flicks the lighter on. The flame trembles a little in the breeze. “You wouldn’t be out here if you weren’t planning on smoking.”

He hadn’t been. Really he hadn’t, but he’s here, with a cigarette in his shaking fingers, and compared to everything else that makes up his life right now, what’s one cigarette? 

He holds it out. Elias catches his wrist, his fingers warm and smooth, and holds it steady until the cherry of the cigarette glows red. He slips it between his lips and takes a drag, holds his breath, exhales. The familiar movements, engrained into muscle memory, are soothing, more so than the tobacco itself. A relic of a time before murderous mannequins and the looming apocalypse. Probably the only time smoking could be viewed as a symbol of innocence.

He takes another drag and then closes his eyes, letting artificial calm wash over him. A few moments and he can pretend that he’s back in research, and the most he has to do with the Archives is the occasional information request. Or maybe further back, at college, smoking on the front porch of the student house he shared, because Derek had invited his mates over again and Jon had needed an escape from the noise.

Elias, unfortunately, is still there when he opens his eyes. He’s leaned back against the wall of the building, and is watching Jon. He can’t tell if his gaze is unusually intense, or if Elias has always watched him like that, and he’s only just noticed.

Jon looks away quickly, and focuses on the cigarette and the weak glow that it emits, so easy to snuff out. God, he never had been good at metaphors, and even he knows that’s maudlin and painfully cliche.

“Are you just here to watch me smoke?” he asks, trying for acerbic but only managing exhausted. “I’d think you could do that much the same from your office.”

Elias gives one of those laughs that is a hum, and his lips curve up into a thin smile. Jon wonders if he ever smiles for real, or if he just repurposes the business casual smile for every occasion. “I could, although it loses something of the detail that being there in person has.”

“Lucky me,” Jon mutters, and Elias’ smile widens. “I thought you didn’t like me smoking anyway,” he adds, because reproach over something mundane would at least feel normal. Elias had disapproved before Jon became the Archivist, and alright, perhaps he should have been more suspicious at Elias’ attention then, but being surrounded by people at university who talked about their mentors, their friends in high places grooming them for cushy jobs and responsibility… had he really been so wrong to imagine that he could have that too?

“Come now Jon,” Elias says, and Jon feels something brush against his mind. “No need for that. Admittedly the final goal may be a little… unorthodox, but the process is the same.” He looks squarely at Jon, and for a second, Jon feels it, like a thousand eyes are turned on him. “You have so much potential. I spotted that from the moment I saw you.”

“The potential to become a monster,” Jon says, and the bitterness is dry on his tongue.

“The potential for something greater, Jon,” Elias says smoothly. “Anyone can become a monster. Plenty of people have managed that without giving up one iota of their humanity.”

“That’s different,” Jon replies, and his grip tightens on the cigarette.

Elias raises an eyebrow. “Is it really? Is human cruelty any less monstrous because it is perpetrated by humans?”

“I didn’t come here to debate philosophy with you,” Jon snaps, and takes another deep drag on his cigarette to try to steady himself, then stubs it out violently against the wall, and flicks it into the nearby bin.

“Of course.” Elias gives a soft chuckle, and when he replies it’s with that placating tone, the one that suggests that Jon is someone to be indulged. It reminds him of being in school, being that too annoying, too blunt child, asking questions far too old for him. “It is true though,” he adds. “I chose you for your potential. You have a rare talent for what you do, an aptitude for it, that even Gertrude never displayed. And she was Archivist for many years.”

Jon wishes he hated the way that the praise warms him, brings colour to his cheeks, his stomach twisting in a way that isn’t altogether unpleasant. It’s Elias, his gaoler, a murderer and servant of a dark and terrible god. 

And it feels good. Jon doesn’t know if this is some aspect of his becoming, or just who Jonathan Sims has always been. He isn’t sure which option is worse.

“I don’t care,” he lies. “All I care about is stopping the Unknowing.”

“And I have utmost faith in you, Jon,” Elias replies, and leans a little closer, the intensity of his gaze. Jon can see flecks of gold in his blue eyes. 

His face feels hot, scalding, and he looks away, looks at anything other than Elias; the neat flowerbeds and trimmed hedges, the branches of the trees. Just beyond the hedge, there’s the sound of people; tourists wandering up towards Westminster, or people on their lunch breaks. Normal people, going about their normal lives, working in offices and shops and none of them having to worry about rituals and monsters.

“Your faith isn’t helping me figure this out,” Jon says, and wishes he sounded more angry. 

Elias sighs. “Jon, it’s because I have faith in you that I can’t tell you more. You can do this, but the more I feed you information, the less you need to stretch yourself. Remember in school, in Year Eleven? William Jones? Who looked at your answers, and failed his exams because he never learned what he needed to.”Jon stares at him, opens his mouth to ask how Elias knows, and then decides that he doesn’t want to know actually, if it was some supernatural knowledge, or purely the result of in-depth stalking. “That isn’t the same. That isn’t the fate of the world.”

“No, it isn’t,” Elias replies, “but doesn’t just make it even more important to ‘revise’, as it were? Rather more at stake than having to do a re-sit.”

“I didn’t have to do any re-sits,” Jon says, and it’s stupid, so stupid, to feel pride at that, at how clever he’d been, but it was all he’d ever been. Other people got the looks and the charisma, the athleticism, or the skill with people. Jonathan Sims, he was clever, and if he wasn’t clever then he was nothing.

“Of course not,” Elias replies, and he sounds pleased, sounds proud, and Jon hates how much he likes it. He’d dreamed once of having someone in his life, someone supportive, who wouldn’t focus on how difficult he was, how awkward and prickly and odd he was. Someone who wanted him to succeed.

He’d thought he and Georgie could… ah, but she’d deserved better. Always had. It was nice being friends with her again, but it wasn’t the same. 

Elias seems very close suddenly, and Jon wraps his arms around himself defensively. Elias is a monster and a murderer and Jon can’t let himself forget that. Especially not for petty self-gratification that he doesn’t deserve.  
“I’m going back inside,” Jon says, although the thought of actually doing so weighs on him. All that’s in there is a place where people hate him, where’s on a fine line of annoyance at best, and enemy at worst. He’s started taking his lunches outside to eat to avoid people looking at him, and the cigarette breaks have become more frequent, even if he’s not actually smoking more.

“Ah, one moment before you, Jon,” Elias says, and god help him, but Jon pauses and looks over at him. Maybe it’s information. He can’t take the risk that if he walks away he’ll miss something important, some sliver of knowledge that could help.

Elias reaches into his breast pocket, and pulls out a slim silver box. There’s no engraving on it, though Jon half expects to see an eye motif. He flicks it open and offers it to Jon.

Inside are cigarettes, but they’re not any that Jon has seen before, not the Silk Cuts that Jon buys from the corner shop near his flat. These have black paper, and they’re tipped with gold and they look like they should cost more than the rent on Jon’s new flat.

He looks up at Elias, brows drawn together into an expression of confusion. “What?”

“For you,” Elias says. “Consider them a gift, or an apology for interrupting your smoking time.”

That makes no sense. But in the grand scheme of things that make no sense anymore, they’re a very small thing. “I thought you didn’t like me smoking.”

“As far as vices go, it isn’t my favourite, but if you are going to indulge, I think you deserve something a bit more… luxurious.”

He should reject this. They’re just cigarettes and he’s trying to give up. But god, when was the last time anyone thought he deserved something nice? He hasn’t even celebrated a birthday in- well, a few years at least. 

“Why are you doing this?” Jon asks, and the words fizz on his tongue.

He gets a small amount of satisfaction from seeing Elias shiver, his smile widening. 

“Because you are important to me, Jon,” he says. There’s no teasing in his voice, no hint that this is some sadistic joke because it’s hilarious to make weirdo Jon think someone could actually want to be friends. 

Something hot pricks at his eyes, and breath coils into a lump at the back of his throat. Stupid, stupid. Elias is dangerous and not to be trusted. He knows this.

He still reaches out to take the offered cigarette case, curling his fingers around it reverently. Elias hands it over, his fingers brushing Jon’s lightly as he does so. They’re warm, Jon thinks, the thought rushing madly through him. Elias’ fingers are very warm. 

He holds the cigarette case in his hand and strokes his thumb over it. The metal is warm from Elias holding it, and it has a comforting weight to it, in a way that crumpled cardboard packaging doesn’t. It opens with a click and those lovely black and gold cigarettes are laid out before him like incense for a forbidden god.

“Go ahead,” Elias encourages him. “Why don’t you try one?”

It feels like a trap and an inevitability. Jon pulls a cigarette from the case and places it between his lips. Even the paper feels expensive, the weight of it, the taste and scent. Elias already has his lighter held out in expectation.

Jon leans in towards it to light the cigarette this time, and he pulls back to take a drag on it. The smoke goes down smooth and rich, and he exhales slowly, savouring it. He feels steadier for having it. He knows it’s stupid to feel that way, and there are certainly healthier ways he could steady his nerves, but none so neat as to fit into a pocket.

Elias has a small smile on his lips when Jon straightens back up and looks over at him. It softens the sharp lines and angles of his face, turns him from the distant boss, or high priest of a monstrous god, into someone approachable, someone human. 

It helps too, galling as that is. He feels more relaxed now, his thoughts quieter. It’ll only last for as long as the cigarette burns, but until then, he can rebuild a little of himself.

“How is it?” Elias asks.

“They’re very good,” Jon replies, and every word feels like a concession, however grudgingly given.

“Excellent,” Elias replies. “I do want you to know how much I appreciate you.”

Jon snorts softly, shakes his head.Elias doesn’t reply though, not in words at least. What he does do is reach out towards Jon. It’s like watching something happen in slow motion, although even that doesn’t make Jon any more able to stop it. Does he want to stop the way Elias’ fingers brush against his cheek? The way they slide to his chin and tilt his head up so he has no choice but to meet Elias’ eyes, cool and amused.

One smooth movement and Elias has the cigarette that had been between Jon’s fingers. Jon watches his lips close around it, the way they tighten as he takes a drag, the movement of his throat.

And then there are lips against his, a spark of heat between them as Elias exhales against his mouth, fills him with fragrant smoke and the tip of his tongue running a path against his teeth.

It leaves him dizzy, trembling, and he swallows thickly, once, twice, exhales the smoke but can still feel it on his tongue, in his throat like the hum of compulsion. He reaches up to touch his lips, like he can still feel Elias’ touch there.

“What-“ he manages to get out, before the words die in his throat and he just stands there, pinned by Elias’ gaze. 

“You’re important,” Elias says firmly. “You have so much potential, and I know that you will do great things.”

Jon’s throat feels tight, heat prickling at the corners of his eyes and he hates it, hates how it affects him, hates that Elias can have this effect on him.

“You’re important to _me_ , Jon,” Elias adds. His fingers brush Jon’s cheek again, light as a promise. “Maybe you should go home early today. You look like you could do with an early night.”

He nods. Doesn’t dare speak in case he cries like a stupid child. Doesn’t dare speak in case he asks for something, begs for something. 

“Good,” Elias says, and that guilty warmth fills Jon. “Remember, you can come to me for anything. I just want to help.”

Jon gives a jerky nod, and fumbles the cigarette to his lips again. “Yeah. I- I will.”

Elias gives another of those all-too-human smiles and turns away. Jon watches as he walks back into the Institute. He exhales slowly, a plume of smoke that leaves him feeling hollowed out. When he looks at the cigarette in his fingers, it’s crushed flat, the paper ragged and torn.


End file.
